Netmarble Cut Its Game Slate From Five to Three

The Quarter That Forced the Cut

Netmarble's own numbers tell a specific story, not a general one. Revenue climbed to KRW 749.2 billion, a 4.4 percent gain, while operating expenses rose 8.5 percent to KRW 669.1 billion. The gap between those two growth rates is almost entirely marketing: spend on user acquisition and campaigns jumped 35.5 percent, concentrated on Sol: Enchant and Monster Guild: Star Dive. Sol: Enchant had been planned for an April release; it launched June 18 instead, which meant the campaign spend that assumed a full quarter of sales instead bought barely two weeks of it.

Kim Byung-Gyu's response on the call was structural, not promotional. He said Netmarble would prioritize extending the life of proven live games, citing The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross, more than seven years old and still generating over KRW 100 billion a year, as the model to replicate, over launching five new titles in the second half and hoping enough of them land. The lineup that remains, Solo Leveling: Karma, the Shangri-La Frontier spinoff, and Project Aegis, is Netmarble's own admission that the five-title plan for 2026 asked the marketing budget to do more than it could.

The Same Week, the Mirror Image at Krafton

Four days earlier, Krafton's Q2 report showed the opposite distortion. Revenue reached a record KRW 1.2902 trillion, up 94.9 percent year-over-year, and operating profit hit a record KRW 410.9 billion, up 67 percent, powered by continued PUBG growth and the early performance of Subnautica 2, which sold five million units within 22 days of its May 15 launch. By the operating line, this was Krafton's best quarter on record.

But Krafton reported a net loss of KRW 29.9 billion for the quarter. CFO Dongkeun Bae attributed it to a KRW 316.7 billion non-operating charge tied to the Unknown Worlds acquisition, the studio behind Subnautica, without detailing on the call whether the charge was a one-time integration cost or the start of an ongoing expense. A company posting its best operating quarter ever, on paper, lost money, because of a single capital decision made outside the games business itself.

Why Two Opposite Overrides Add Up to the Same Lesson

Put the two calls next to each other and a pattern appears that neither company stated out loud. Netmarble's headline profit rose while its operating business weakened, because a real-estate sale covered for marketing spent on a game that arrived late. Krafton's headline profit fell while its operating business hit a record, because an acquisition charge outweighed the best quarter PUBG and Subnautica have ever produced. In both cases, the number that moves the stock price this week is the one least connected to whether the games themselves are working.

The practical lesson for anyone reading Korean gaming earnings this quarter is not to trust net income as a shorthand for either company's health, and to notice what both CEOs actually did next: neither one promised a bigger 2027 lineup or a bigger acquisition to compensate. Netmarble cut its own slate from five games to three. Krafton, for its part, offered no new M&A guidance on the call. The concentration instinct, fewer bets, funded properly, is the same decision wearing two different balance-sheet costumes.

Read next: Square Enix's Profit Doubled. Its Guidance Didn't.  |  Embracer's Turnaround Skips the Spin-Off Unit